Correlations between Students Behaviour in Learning Management - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Correlations between Students’ Behaviour in Learning Management Systems and their Learning Style Preferences Sabine Graf Tzu-Chien Liu Kinshuk National Central University National Central University Athabasca University Taiwan Taiwan Canada sabine.graf@ieee.org ltc@cc.ncu.edu.tw kinshuk@ieee.org

Motivation • Many research works have been conducted with respect to learning styles in technology enhanced learning, e.g., – Recommending how systems can adapt to learning styles – Building adaptive systems – Automatic student modelling • Most of these research works are based on the learning style model‘s description about how students with specific learning styles typically behave • But most learning style models are developed for traditional learning rather than online learning 2

Aim of Research How does students behave in an online course considering their learning styles? � Correlations between behaviour and learning style preferences • Learning Management Systems: – Support teachers in creating, administrating, and managing online courses – Consider a broad range of features of technology enhanced learning (TEL) – Are commonly used in TEL � By incorporating only behaviour which is common in TEL, we aim at making our results applicable for TEL in general 3

Benefits from more detailed information • Student Modelling – Automatic approach has several advantages over using learning style questionnaires • free of problems regarding inaccurate self-conception • Considering data from a time span � more accurate • Consideration of changes of learning styles – More detailed information about how students really behave in an online environment can make the automatic student modelling approach more accurate • Adaptive Course Generation – More detailed information about how students really prefer to behave can help in developing more precise adaptation features • Potential of adaptivity regarding learning styles – The existance of correlations between behaviour and learning styles gives another indication for the potential of adaptive learning with respect to learning styles 4

Learning Style Preferences • Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model (FSLSM) • Dimensions: – Active – Reflective learning by doing – learning by thinking things through group work – work alone – Sensing – Intuitive concrete material – abstract material more practical – more innovative and creative patient / not patient with details standard procedures – challenges – Visual – Verbal learning from pictures – learning from words – Sequential – Global learn in linear steps – learn in large leaps interested in details – interested in the overview good in using partial knowledge – good in connecting areas 5

Learning Style Preferences • Index of Learning Styles (ILS) Questionnaire: – Developed by Felder and Soloman – 44 questions – Result: a value between + 11 and -11 for each dimension • Differences to other learning style models: – combine major learning style models – describes learning style in more detail – represents also balanced preferences – describes tendencies 6

Learning Style Preferences • Characteristic Preferences within Felder- Silverman Learning Style dimensions (Graf, Viola, Kinshuk, and Leo, 2007) reflective active Trying things Collaborate Reflect about Work Student 1 out with others the material alone Trying things Collaborate Reflect about Work Student 2 out with others the material alone Trying things Collaborate Reflect about Work Student 3 out with others the material alone 7

Learning Style Preferences • Derived Semantic Groups from the learning style model (Graf, Viola, Kinshuk, Leo, 2007) • Verifying Semantic Groups by Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis and empirical frequencies analysis Style Semantic group ILS questions (answer a) Style Semantic group ILS questions (answer b) Active trying something out 1, 17, 25, 29 Reflective think about material 1, 5, 17, 25, 29 social oriented 5, 9, 13, 21, 33, 37, 41 impersonal oriented 9, 13, 21, 33, 41, 37 Sensing existing ways 2, 30, 34 Intuitive new ways 2, 14, 22, 26, 30, 34 concrete material 6, 10, 14, 18, 26, 38 abstract material 6, 10, 18, 38 careful with details 22, 42 not careful with details 42 Visual pictures 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, Verbal spoken words 3, 7, 15, 19, 27, 35 35, 39, 43 written words 3, 7, 11, 23, 31, 39 difficulty with visual style 43 Sequential detail oriented 4, 28, 40 Global overall picture 4, 8, 12, 16, 28, 40 sequential progress 20, 24, 32, 36, 44 non-sequential progress 24, 32 from parts to the whole 8, 12, 16 relations/connections 20, 36, 44 � Allows building a more accurate model of the student 8

Design of the Study • Object oriented modelling course at an university in Austria • 127 students participated • Moodle was used to provide additional learning material and learning opportunities • Students need to perform 5 assignments and a final exam • Student interaction with Moodle was tracked • Students filled out the ILS questionnaire for providing information about their learning style preferences 9

Investigated Behaviour • Incorporates only behaviour based on commonly used features in TEL – Content Commonly – Outlines FSLSM used – Examples features – Self-assessment tests – Exercises – Discussion Forum Investigated – Navigation Behaviour – General Patterns 10

Patterns of Behavior • Content objects – Number of visits – Time student spent on content objects – Time student spent on content objects including graphics – Time student spent on content objects including only text • Outlines – Number of visits – Time spent on outlines • Self-assessment tests (SA-Tests) – Number of tests performed – Whether all available tests were performed at least once – Results on tests – Number of questions a learner answers twice wrong – Number of revisions before submission – Time spent on the test – Time a learner checked his/ her results – Results on specific kinds of questions (facts/ concepts, detail/ overview, graphics/ text, interpreting predefined solutions/ generating new solutions) 11

Patterns of Behavior • Exercises – Number of visits – Time students spent on exercises – Results on exercises – Number of revisions before submission (in combination with SA-Tests) – Results on questions about interpreting predefined solutions/ generating new solutions (in combination with SA-Tests) • Examples – Number of visits – Time spent on examples • Discussion Forum – Number of visits – Time spent in the forum – Number of postings 12

Patterns of Behavior • Navigation – Number of times, students skipped learning objects – Number of times, students jumped back to the previous learning object – Number of visits of the course overview page – Time students spent on the course overview page • General Patterns – Scores on final exam – Scores on compulsory assignments – Overall time students spent in the course – Number of logins – Overall number of visited learning objects 13

Method of Analysis • Requirements – Spending more than 5 minutes on the ILS questionnaire (41 students excluded) – Submitting at least 3 assignments (10 students excluded) – Performing the final exam (16 students excluded) � 75 Students fulfilled the requirments • For calculating correlations between behaviour and learning style preferences, rank correlation analysis was used (Kendall‘s tau) 14

Results – Active/ Reflective Dimension trythingsout social oriented think about material impersonal oriented forum_visit (-) forum_visit (+) forum_stay (-) forum_stay (+) quiz_que_codedev (-) exercise_score (+) content_stay (-) content_stay (+) nav_skip (-) nav_skip (+) 15

Results – Sensing/ Intuitive Dimension existing ways concrete material careful with details new ways abstract material not carefule with details exercise_score (-) exercise_score (-) forum_visit (+) selfass_visit (-) exercise_score (+) selfass_ques_detail (-) slides_visit_diff (+) selfass_ques_detail (+) exercise_score (+) quiz_ques_codedev (+) selfass_ques_conceptual (-) selfass_ques_factual (+) slides_visit_diff (-) selfass_ques_text (-) selfass_ques_conceptual (+) course_time (-) selfass_visit (-) selfass_ques_graphics (+) selfass_score (-) selfass_ques_text (+) exercise_visit (-) selfass_visit (+) exercise_stay (-) selfass_visit_diff (+) quiz_ques_codeint (-) selfass_score (+) exam_score (-) exercise_visit (+) course_time (-) exercise_stay (+) course_activities (-) quiz_ques_codeint (+) slides_visit_diff (+) nav_overview_stay (+) course_time (+) course_login (+) course_activities (+) 16

Results – Visual/ Verbal Dimension pictures spoken words written words difficulty with visual style selfass_ques_overview (+) example_visit (-) forum_post (+) example_visit_diff (-) exercise_visit (-) example_stay (-) exercise_stay (-) outine_stay (-) 17